The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for operating on messages, and more particularly for operating on non-text messages, such as voice and facsimile messages, including, for example, searching such messages.
Modern communications technology has produced voice mail, faxes, e-mail, video conferencing and many other ways to send messages.
The growth in voice mail systems has been explosive. In 1996, telephone company revenues generated by providing Voice Mail service exceeded one billion dollars. While business users typically buy voice mail systems, residential customers buy this service from telephone companies. The residential market accounts for 82% of telephone company voice mail subscribers and 69% of revenues generated. Thus, voice mail and faxes are fully part of the daily communications fabric.
In the last twenty years the use of facsimile messaging (fax) has also exploded. The cost of fax machines has decreased steadily, and with the advent of computer telephony (CT), faxes can be received and sent via local area networks (LANs) directly to computers on the user's desktop, eliminating the need to even walk down the hall to the fax machine.
Known systems will collect all digital communications, display the time of receipt, the source of the message, and indicate whether it is voice mail, a fax, or e-mail.
With known systems, a user with a telephone system and a computer can quickly become inundated with information. As such, it is important to be able to separate important messages, or messages which contain key information, from routine messages or electronic junk mail. With known systems this is difficult. In addition, finding key elements of messages can be time consuming and difficult, if not impossible. Known systems provide functions for finding, filtering, filing and re-directing textual messages (e.g., e-mail) but do not do so for voice or facsimile messages.